How Epstein became a tech influencer

The Vergecast

A new tranche of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails makes one thing painfully clear: Epstein was a central figure in the lives of a lot of big names in tech, and had influence on a surprising number of companies and executives. David and Nilay talk through what we’ve learned from the new emails so far. Then they turn to Anthropic’s spicy new Super Bowl ads about... ads, which caused a big reaction from OpenAI (which is betting big on ads). They also discuss this week’s antitrust hearing about Netflix’s purchase of Warner Bros., the latest in Brendan Carr is a Dummy, Google Home’s big buttons upgrade, and much more.


Further reading:

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A new tranche of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails makes one thing painfully clear: Epstein was a central figure in the lives of a lot of big names in tech, and had influence on a surprising number of companies and executives. David and Nilay talk through what we’ve learned from the new emails so far. Then they turn to Anthropic’s spicy new Super Bowl ads about... ads, which caused a big reaction from OpenAI (which is betting big on ads). They also discuss this week’s antitrust hearing about Netflix’s purchase of Warner Bros., the latest in Brendan Carr is a Dummy, Google Home’s big buttons upgrade, and much more.


Further reading:

Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

2026-02-06 94 min
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